As the Planet Warms, El Niño Could Become Harder to Predict (1 of 1) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

As the Planet Warms, El Niño Could Become Harder to Predict (1 of 1)

Caption

Equatorial Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies are an important precursor for extreme El Niño and extreme La Niña. An anomalous warm condition in the tropical Atlantic in June-July-August 1988 (A) enhances convection in the Atlantic and descending motion the central, inducing stronger easterlies over the central western Pacific, which contributed to the extreme La Niña in 1988/89 (B). Conversely, an anomalous cold condition in the equatorial Atlantic in June-July-August 1997 (C) contributed to the 1997/98 extreme El Niño (D). Such tropical Atlantic precursor also operated during the development of the 1982/83 extreme El Niño and 1998/99 extreme La Niña. Our study finds that under global warming, despite a projected increase in extreme El Niño and La Niña events, the Atlantic precursor weakens, making prediction of extreme El Niño and La Niña more challenging. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the August 21st, 2019, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by F. Jia at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, China, and colleagues was titled, "Weakening Atlantic Niño-Pacific connection under greenhouse warming."

Credit

Data for this image is from NOAA Optimum Interpolation (OI) Sea Surface Temperature (SST) V2.

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